


annie oakley's turning in her grave

by soitgoes



Series: ramblers ramblin' [3]
Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 18:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2318945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soitgoes/pseuds/soitgoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“¿Has visto a una niña ? Una chica blanca." Seth knows its gonna be a bad day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	annie oakley's turning in her grave

_I got a bad feeling about this place_ , is Seth’s first thought as he and Kate roll up into a quiet little town just before sunrise. The whole town is washed in a wrung out blue and there’s barely anyone on the streets to watch them roll in. It’s just a gut feeling and there’s no way to really tell if it’s based in fact or from the warped workings of his weary mind. They’ve been driving for nearly ten silent hours. Seth has been feeling cranky and every single time Kate tried to start a conversation he either shot it down or refused to answer.

“Oh look, Seth! ‘Burritos as big as your head’!” Kate reads from the neon sign flickering in one of the shop windows. He wonders if food is all she ever things about. It seems to him to be the only thing she talks about. Sometimes when they stop to get a hot meal he just watches her. Its like she's got a black hole for a stomach. She can put away more than he can. “They’re 24 hours! Let’s stop. I’m starving.”

Seth slows down and the car rumbles in idle at he glances though the glass. He spies some kid hunched over the counter. Their body leans to one side propped up on their elbow, chin resting in the palm of their hand. Another person is seated at the back. All dressed in black, head dipped below the line of their hunched shoulders, there’s no way to tell for sure but from where he and Kate sit in the car the customer looks to be asleep too. They look harmless enough but Seth’s got a feeling in his gut that something’s going to happen.

To his alarm, Kate’s already unlocking the door and pulling on the handle. She’s got the door cracked when he grabs for her arm and pulls her back in. The door shuts and he locks them.

“What the hell?” Kate exclaims angry and shaken. She still sounds funny when she curses. It always sounds a little too rehearsed to Seth like she’s been practicing in the mirror. Seth would have been tickled pink to learn that she actually does. She practices in the shower too. “What’d you do that for?”

“We’re not getting out.”

“Jeeze if you didn’t want burritos you could have just said,” mumbles under her breath.

He looks over at her. She’s curled up into the seat, leaning against the door her forehead pushed up against the glass. He’s hurt her feelings. He can tell but that doesn’t make him stop, doesn’t make him turn around. He can’t even really apologize. He just keeps driving while keeping an eye out for a motel.

“I’m just tired and we’ve got some apples and beef jerky in the back,” he says. His face lights up a little when he spots a neon sign reading ‘motel’ in flickering letters. “I just wanna get a couple hours of shut eye and then we’ll skip this town all right, princess? You know I’ve got nothing against burritos. We’ll get something after we get some shut eye.”

There’s a pause before she says, “Yeah all right.”

They check in and he is all too happy to fall into the bed face first. He falls asleep to the sound of the television, some infomercial with a man speaking Spanish so fast the sounds all blend together into a low hum to his weary ears.

He dreams about Richie. He always dreams about Richie.

* * *

_In his dreams they are kids again._

_They are dressed in tiny kid suits. They’re both wielding those little toy guns that kids around with except now he can feel the weight of the lethal machinery in them just inside their cheaply-made, lead-painted plastic casing. He can feel each and every bullet in the clip._

"Here’s to getting rich and fat,

And dying in the arms of a beautiful woman."

_They say it together their high young voices almost indistinguishable from one another. Then they turn and run in their little suits, hands weighted down by their guns. They are in their childhood home, moving through the hallways bent low to the floor like they used to do. Seth moves like the air is molasses or honey. His limbs are heavy and all his movements are sluggish but Richie is moving quick as ever. Seth keeps losing him around corners and down the hall which is dimly lit and endless now like the catacombs below the Twister._

_Occasionally Richie turns back to him and hisses,_ "Come on, bro. Keep up will you?"

_Seth replies but his mouth moves so slowly he isn’t even sure what he says but Richie doesn’t care. He just keeps going and spinning through the hall making noises that vaguely resemble the sound of gunshots and Seth knows that as Richie makes the sounds his gun actually fires. Richie leaves a trail of bullet wounds in the walls as he goes along. The halls echo with nothing but the sound of childish imitations of gun fire until he hears a scream and the gun fire ceases._

_When he turns the corner he sees Kate on the ground. She’s dressed like Jesus in a white robe and a halo of light flickers around her head. He looks closer and sees that it’s just a neon circlet, a fuse blown and blinking. She’s got bullet wounds in her hands and feet and one in her side. She lies on her side, a look of surprised horror on her face. Nothing moves except for her eyes that follow him as he inches away._

_Richie is nowhere to be found._

_More gun shots and more screams. This time he finds Vanessa all done up in the wedding dress she never got to wear, her hair up in curls, lips red. Her eyes watch him as well as he moves around._

_The halls are littered with bodies. Some of them he recognizes, others he doesn’t. They all watch him as he moves in slow motion past them, stepping over their strewn limbs and pools of blood._

_Last is his father. He doesn’t hear Richie making his make-believe gunshots._

"‘Course not,"  _Seth murmurs between heavy, heaving breaths._ "He never shot dad. He burned him."

 _Sure enough heat hits him as soon as he turns the corner leading to a dead end. He sees Richie standing with a box of matches in his hands and his father a flaming black mass writhing at Richie’s feet. Richie is still lighting matches and throwing them at their father who moves in a halting unnatural way. At times he’s moving so fast he’s nothing but a blur. Sometimes he goes so slow that Seth can see in high-definition the cracks in his blackened skin._    

"Kill your gods, bro," _Richie says this time sounding like his adult self, like he did when he left._  "Kill them all and you become yourself."

_Seth can’t stop staring at his father writhing on the ground._

"God, Seth,"  _Richie says impatiently._ "Do I have to do everything for you?"

_Richie puts his gun to his head._

* * *

When he comes to he’s alone. The lights are off and the curtains are drawn but he knows it daylight outside. The edges of the curtain glow a warm orange. He’s covered in sweat and his vision is hazy at best but he already knows something isn’t right. The feeling is fuzzy and vague, pulling at his gut but he manages to ignore it.

He scrambles off the bed and ambles over to the metal chair where he threw his jacket. All of his muscles are tight and his joints feel like a thick layer of rust had built up in them. _I’m getting too old for this shit_ , he thinks to himself. He pulls on his jacket with more effort than he’d like to admit and makes it all the way to bathroom without stumbling once. He’s halfway through a very satisfying piss when he realizes what’s off.

“Kate,” he mumbles to himself then he says it again a tremble of terror rumbling through him. “ _Kate._ Fuck.”

He zips up his fly and goes out in to the room. Even though he knows she’s already gone, Seth still takes a few frantic seconds to glance around the room. He bursts through the door into the late afternoon heat, the world awash in bright orange, still tucking his gun into the front of his pants. He runs down the sidewalk but is surprised to see the desolate streets that he and Kate had passed through only hours before has turned into a congested vein of interwoven tents and booths. People are packed up against one another so tightly that the crowd sways in waves like an ocean of bodies all chattering and laughing and shouting.

“Oh _shit_ , Kate.”

 

“¿Has visto a una niña ? Una chica blanca,” he says to anyone who will stop for him.

He mostly only gets confused shrugs, whether their confusion is the result of his question or his pronunciation he isn’t sure. Either way they aren’t any help and when he tries ask again they push past him or around irritated that he is distracting them from the festivities. Eventually he stops asking and just moves through the crowd, eyes peeled and ears open. He hears her before he sees her.

“Please I don’t want to talk to you.”

Her voice is faint and wavering in the cacophony of the crowd. 

“Come on. I’m just trying to get to know you.”

A tall, heavy set man stands off to the side leaning against a wall at the entrance of a narrow alley. He's wearing a tacky tropical patterned shirt. His sandy blonde hair is covered by a wide brimmed cap but the back of his neck is a bright pink from sun exposure. 

“I said no. Don’t fucking touch me," Kate says and Seth sees a flash of her brown hair and her plaid shirt as she backs away further into the alleyway. 

“What a dirty mouth you got there, sugarbutt. Why not show me what it can do?”

Seth’s got murder in his eyes as he pushes his way towards them. A few people shout at him as he shoves them out of his way but their anger and reciprocal shoves don’t even register. He’s _pissed_. He’s pissed at Kate for running out when he told her not to. He’s pissed at himself for not realizing that trying keeping her cooped up wouldn’t have worked even in a dream. Most of all he’s _fucking_ pissed at the asshole trying to pick up an under-aged girl that obviously doesn’t want shit to do with him. He’s seeing red when he hears the bastard squeal.

“You fucking _bitch_ ,” he screeches and he sees Kate maneuver around the guy’s body but she’s not fast enough.

He catches her by the arm and pulls her back towards the wall. For a split second Seth can see every bit of horror she’s experiencing. It cuts it way to the surface of her face, terror claws out of her eyes. There’s a little bit of blood at the corner of her mouth, a red smudge on her trembling lip. She bit the bastard so hard she drew blood. He powers through the last foot or so just in time to dig barrel of his gun into the man’s fat, pink neck before he can do anything more than curse at Kate one last time.

“Not a good fucking idea, amigo,” Seth hisses.

His breathing is erratic and he can’t seem to stop the shaking rage roaring through him. He’s too tired. He’s too scared. The thoughts of what might have happened had he been just a few seconds late. But his hand is steady as he puts his finger on the trigger and squeezes ever so slightly.

“Jesus Christ,” the tourist exclaims dropping Kate’s arm immediately.

“Yeah you should be praying you fucking fuck,” he says.

He can practically taste this guy’s fear and it feels good. It is a heady sensation that Seth hasn't felt in so long. It feels like pulling the perfect heist, like flipping a perfect fucking pancake. It feels like winning and Seth gets an idea in his head. He knows he has to push it further, as far as he can go. He squeezes the trigger and the bastard screeches. The smell of fresh piss rises to up into Seth’s nostrils and he feels like laughing and screaming and laughing some more. As it turns out in his rush out of the room Seth had forgotten to load his gun.

Seth takes Kate by the hand and pulls her over the tourist’s crumpled and sobbing form. They rush through the crowd. In their wake they leave a trail of pissed off festival goers shouting at them but Seth and Kate never slow down. The keep going until the crowd thins enough for them to catch their breath. Eventually they find an empty street and sit down on the curb.

“Seth,” she chatters barely forming the syllables of his name as her chin trembles. “Seth I’m – I – I’m so s-s-sorr-“

“Stop,” he breathes.

“Please don’t be mad. Don’t be mad I’m so so sorr-“

“No, Kate,” he cuts her off his voice so low and ragged it stings a little. “You don’t ever need to apologize to me.”

He looks up at her with pleading eyes. He just doesn’t want to hear her say sorry after what he just did, after what she went through. A barrage of memories of the slammer pushes through his mind, inmates making passes, calling him pretty, hands on his ass and mouth. He wonders if Kate can see it in him, those raw, rancid memories. The look in his eyes is too much for her and she turns her gaze away to the sidewalk. He continue to stare at her and she can feel his gaze burning through her.

“There’s no getting around it,” he mumbles and takes her hand.

She gasps and pulls away. She’s still raw too. Everything about her is tender and the sudden physical contact leaves her shaking. Seth apologizes and raises his gun up to her eye level. Then very slowly he places it in her hand. It takes her a couple seconds to realize what he’s telling her.

“You’re gonna teach me how to shoot? Really?” she says her whole face lighting up like he’s just got her a new bike on Christmas.

She wipes at the tears wobbling precariously at the edge of her curve of her bottom eyelids. He notices that she misses one and when she blinks it ends up in her eyelashes. She looks like a child and his heart shrivels for her. She’s just a kid and he’s just promised to teach her how to put a bullet in someone’s body.

“Yeah, Annie Oakley’s turning in her grave.”

“Who’s that?” she says her focus glued to the gun.

He glances at her his face already set to deliver the biggest eye roll of the century before he catches the look on her face. A wicked smile, eyebrows tilted up she looks wholly unimpressed by his lack of faith in her historic knowledge. She was joking.

“I _did_ take American History, Seth.”

“Well only one of us has a diploma so,” he says trailing off.

She snorts.

“Didn’t do you much good,” she mumbles not unkindly.

He rolls his eye at her then the conversation falls flat on its face between them. He wonders if they’ll ever out grow this, the awkward pauses and sweaty, nervous silences. He doesn’t think so.

“Kate look at me,” he says about to put his hand on her shoulder but he hesitates. He doesn’t move until she nods at him letting him know that it’s all right to touch her. He looks her straight in the eye and says, “The next time someone puts their hands on you without your permission, fuckin’ blow their hands off.”

Her eyes go wide, startled at his coarse language and the nearly abrasive tone of his voice. Jacob would probably be pissed if he knew what Seth was teaching his daughter. Seth doesn't know much about the bible but he remembers a few fragments. _Turn the other cheek_ , he's not even sure if that's from the Bible but it always seemed like shit advice. He feels a little guilty that maybe he's ruining her a little bit but more than anything Seth just wants her to know that there is never anything wrong with putting up a fight. He wants her to know that she should never apologize for putting guys like that asshole tourist from the festival in agony. He wants her to know she should never feel shame for putting a bullet in anyone who tries to put one in her first.

“Okay,” she says after awhile and she smiles.

Seth notices that there’s still blood at the corner of her mouth.


End file.
